WOMEN'S ASPIRATIONS IN Q.S. AL-MUJADILAH [58] VERSE 1: MOHAMMED ARKOUN'S CRITICAL LINGUISTIC REVIEW

Why should we act morally? This question regarding justification has like no other occupied moral philosophy since the Second World War. Eventually, a perspective has prevailed that has abandoned traditional models of justification in favour of ethical pluralism and moral progress. Since there should no longer be any external reasons, only that which can be thought without contradiction can be considered generally binding. But what does contradiction mean here? This study brings Wittgenstein's philosophy of language into constellation with critical theory in order to show that modern moral philosophy must fail because of its claim. The starting point is Wittgenstein's private language argument and in particular §125 of the Philosophical Investigations, in which he describes contradiction as the central philosophical problem of bourgeois society. It becomes clear that neither freedom from contradiction nor moral justification precede social practice. On the contrary, the supposed rationality of modern moral philosophy reflects the contradictions of our society. The task of philosophy is therefore not to resolve these contradictions, but to expose them through critical linguistic analysis. By bringing Wittgenstein into dialogue with Marx, Adorno and Horkheimer, a new approach to moral philosophy emerges - a critique that is both linguistic and social.

In this paper, we present an analysis of ‘pleasure’ in sex and relationships education (SRE) in England. Drawing together two distinct sources of data and different but complementary analytical frameworks, we argue that pleasure is largely absent within SRE and that this discursive silence serves to produce highly gendered and heteronormative understandings of sexual agency, autonomy and empowerment. A critical linguistic analysis of the current Department for Education (DfE) SRE guidance for England reveals that sex is positioned as a ‘risky’ and dangerous activity, which is clearly linked to child protection; sex is not discussed as pleasurable. Focus group discussions conducted with young women in the North East of England highlight the ways in which gendered discourses about pleasure construct expectations for ‘appropriate’ sexual identities and behaviours. These may be linked to negative experiences such as sexual harassment and bullying and compromised sexual subjectivity. We suggest that existing DfE SRE guidance in England be re-examined with particular reference to addressing gender equality, including in relation to access to a discourse of sexual pleasure and rights.

This study examines the linguistic structures and processes through which news reports about a political issue in South Korea serve to propagate specific ideologies. Critical linguistic analysis is used as the theoretical and analytical framework to examine news reports about the North Korean nuclear threat to South Korea in the New York Times and the Korea Herald. Through a comparative analysis of two newspapers, it illustrates how the linguistic structures and processes in news discourse combine to produce particular meanings which construct ideological representations of social reality by establishing an 'us vs. them' dichotomy from their own particular ideological position. This study makes two contributions. First, it contributes to the development of a theoretical and methodological framework which is capable of revealing the ideological underpinning of news texts. Second, this study demonstrates the ideological role of language within news discourse as an apparatus for molding attitudes and value-systems in readers. This study has an implication for teaching language awareness of the constructive and functional nature of language in general and news discourse in particular in and out of a school setting, (key words : critical linguistic analysis, language awareness, language and ideology, naturalization, propagation)

Explicit communication is imperative in building up relationships among members of organizations and institutions. This study described, critically analyzed and interpreted the linguistic features of the accessible print communications, which in effect brought out the communication culture, social and power relations of the members of the three tertiary institutions in Davao City. Results revealed a mixed sentence construction of declaratives and imperatives, actives and passives. Gratulatory and courteous expressions like More Power, God Bless, Please, Kindly, May I, marked significant presence in the prototype opening and closing fragments which these expressions have become standard parts of these memorandums. Variation among the structures was the divine exaltation (predictive of the culture of the university) found in the initial portion of the memorandums. Also noted was the legalese, archaic and formal tone, hereby and of the memorandum of the university president that was echoed in the memorandums of the student organization officers. An intensified writing training program in two categories: for new administrators and student officers have to be effected. Keywords - Applied linguistics, linguistic structures, critical linguistic analysis, print communications, communication culture, discourse analysis, Philippines

Critical theory is an always-evolving school of thought concerned with critiquing and transforming society. Critical theory refers to the theories developed by the Frankfurt School and other recent social scientists and feminist theorists whose theories aim to explain and transform social circumstances that enslave human beings. Critical theory has been the main source of analysis in the field of curriculum studies, particularly critical curriculum theory. Critical theory has particularly influenced the work of critical curriculum theorists focused on curriculum for social reconstruction. It is important to note that, however, the critical tradition in curriculum studies in the U.S. can also be traced back to the work of Dewey, Counts, Rugg, Macdonald, Huebner, and Greene. The integration of critical theory into this critical tradition contributes to the formation of critical curriculum studies, which is well represented in the scholarship of Michael W. Apple, one of the world’s foremost educational and curriculum theorists. Apple’s emphasis on critical examination of the social realities on the one hand and search for possibilities to empower people and transform society on the other hand points to crucial tasks of critical educational and curriculum studies. Possibilities about using the process of schooling for social reconstruction and designing curriculum for a new cultural order depend on how thoroughly the current problems of social realities can be uncovered. The ideas of ideology, hegemony, official knowledge, power, deskilling, reskilling, and work intensification will be introduced to help readers understand how critical curriculum studies use these notions to examine key critical theory themes such as the politics of domination, legitimation, oppression, and exploitation embedded in school curriculum. Recent development of critical theories has presented various directions for critical curriculum scholarship. The discussion of critical theory within curriculum studies is a way to revive the tradition of loosely termed critical curriculum studies (Sadovnik 1991) while simultaneously providing a contextual framework to build a rich conceptual foundation for engaging in a disciplined critical curriculum analysis. As new forms of critical theory have been and will be developed, critical curriculum studies continue to be enriched by this school of thought. The task of critical curriculum theory must be to open up more spaces for collective work for both critical analysis and social transformation.

Issue: As medical education continues to grapple with issues of systemic racism and oppression within its institutions, educational researchers will undoubtedly turn to critical theory to help illuminate these issues. Critical theory refers both to a “school of thought” and a process of critique that reveals the dynamic forces impacting minoritized groups and individuals. Critical theory can be helpful when researchers want to examine or expose social structures for their asymmetrical power differentials, and subsequently act upon them to create change. Evidence: However, despite the repeated calls for more critical work in medical education, merely describing critical theory’s school of thought has not forwarded researchers’ engagement with these theories. Presently, critical analyses remain rare in medical education. One potential reason for the lack of critical analyses is that there is little guidance for how researchers might engage with their data and approach their findings. Implications: In this paper, we go beyond merely describing critical theory and demonstrate how critical theory can be used as an analytic approach to interrogate the experiences of minoritized individuals in medical education. Using three critical theories: critical race theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory, we provide an illustration of how researchers might approach their data using one of three critical theories. In doing so, we hope to assist researchers in better understanding the utility of critical analyses to illuminate sociohistorical forces at work within medical education.

Discriminatory practices against Roma (also known as Romanies) occur on a daily basis in many countries around the world through media discourse. This paper investigates the representation of Romanies in U.S. and Canadian online newspaper crime reports and compares this representation to Wall Street/CEOs in crime reports demonstrating how identity of both groups is constructed through a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic strategies. Drawing on Mayr and Machin’s (2012) critical linguistic analysis of the language of crime, this multimodal study incorporates a variety of tools such as Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics in order to dig below the surface to reveal ideological frames. Results illustrate the denaturalization (and negative representation) of Romanies and contrasting naturalization of CEOs and point to a growing need for consciousness-raising through critical linguistic analysis such as this in order to continue to fight for social change and a more just system for the Roma.

This paper describes the way Belgian politicians represented themselves, their parties and the political situation in newspaper interviews in the government formation period of 2007. Interviews with four politicians, both in Dutch and in French, have been analyzed in order to reconstruct the image the politicians convey of themselves and of the political parties they stand for, and to reconstruct the frames they apply to the political situation. A critical linguistic and framing analysis shows how this representation is built up through an interplay of names used to describe oneself, the specific use of the pronouns of the first person plural and consistent metaphors. The paper ties in with the theme of this special issue in that it bridges the gap between construction grammar and linguistic discourse analysis: knowledge of social networks (and their evaluation of utterances) is important for analyzing choices between discourse alternatives by discourse agents (as politicians are).

This study offers a linguistic description of the idiom of the Jews of the Comtat Venaissin (“Judeo-Provençal”) at the end of the 18th century, based on a critical edition of the only relevant document illustrating this language, a theatrical play in verse entitled Harcanot et Barcanot. The introduction provides a philological inventory of all known sources of “Judeo-Provençal.” The critical and variorum edition of the text, accompanied by linear glosses in English, is followed by a commentary comprising a glossary and analysis of all relevant linguistic features. It reveals, inter alia, that this language possessed words pertaining to the linguistic repertoire of French Jews since the Middle Ages; as for the phonetic features of the Jewish dialect of Provençal, their etiology is to be found in the history of the communities. The study concludes with a reassessment of the nature of linguistic variation in the dialect of the Jews of Provence.

Spiritual consumerism-the processes and practices when consumers buy goods and services to seek fulfillment is often used as a marketing strategy. This study investigates five jewelry websites (Buddha Stones, Shubhanjali, Karma and Luck, Buddha&Karma, Moaura), which use spiritual discourse to promote their products. 20 screenshots (including advertising page, products classification page, products/service display page, and product description page) were analyzed through multimodal discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, focusing on legitimation, intertextuality, and visual grammar strategies. This study shows that the website makers use spiritual symbols, traditional colors, intertextual references, and legitimation to link buying their products with spiritual practice. Although the use of these discourse strategies blurs the boundary between spiritual practice and commerce, they may mislead consumers by hiding true promotional intention behind spiritual texts.

Agency in foreign news: A linguistic complement of a content analytical study

Critical theory remains a central theoretical framework in research for equity and social justice. In this chapter, we introduce some of the major concepts in critical theory and the educational theory of critical pedagogy. We also attempt to differentiate critical theory from other perspectives like critical race theory, with which it is often conflated. We also suggest ways in which critical theory can be mobilized in educational research. While a short chapter such as this cannot capture the complexity and long history of critical theory and critical pedagogy approaches, we aim to provide a useful introduction and resources for those wishing to go further with this perspective.

The classical canon of ‘critical theory’ – the early Frankfurt School, Marxist and post-Marxist theories – has lead to a tradition of understanding cultural critique solely as a subversive critique directed against Western confidence in progress, normative concepts of the subject and identity formation, the culture industry etc. In studies of migration and culture, this notion of critique has manifested itself as a preference for the so-called ‘spaces in-between’ and a general rejection of all identity and subject constructions. Our own work in this field has made it increasingly clear to us that critical cultural theory and analysis can also be severely hampered by the subversive approach. Today, critical practice must thus entail taking the next step: to develop and discuss alternatives that can open new perspectives. In this spirit, the article accounts for the idea of a postmigrant perspective that aims at overcoming the dichotomy between ‘majority’ and ‘minorities’, and which makes it possible to take a fresh, but still critical, approach to the transformative impact of migration on society. After unpacking the idea of the ‘postmigrant’, the article proceeds to reflect on how a critical cultural analysis that applies a postmigrant perspective can contribute to developing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of recognition and structural discrimination, thereby revitalising two classical themes in critical theory: suppression and recognition.

The study “Rhetorical strategies in selected Nigerian print media advertisements” sought to investigate the interconnectedness between rhetoric and advertising. Privileging Aristote’s theory of rhetoric (1991), Halliday’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and van Dijk’s (1993) Socio-Cognitive Approach (SCA) as theoretical frameworks, the study which adopted a descriptive qualitative case study research design and a purposive data collection method carried out a linguistic stylistic analysis as well as a critical discourse analysis of the selected data. The findings from the linguistic stylistic analysis showed that advertisers deploy various attractive and attention-seeking rhetorical strategies at the different levels of linguistic analysis in order to grab the interest and attention of the listener, while the critical discourse analysis revealed that the rhetorical strategies are employed as persuasive devices to cause a change in the buying choices and behaviour of customers. The critical discourse analysis further revealed that the advertisements aside selling a product also communicate socio-cultural values and ideologies. The study concluded amongst other things that rhetoric is a significant component of advertising and that the rhetorical strategies prevalent in the linguistic analysis of the advertisements function as persuasive elements that inform about the availability of goods and services as well as function in transmitting the socio-cultural values and ideologies of the environment in which they are created.

Interpersonal communication theorizing offers limited attention to the ways that our relationships are constrained by gender and power. To answer these limitations, critical feminist theory (CFT) offers possibilities. In this essay, I consider its foundation in both critical theory and feminist theory, and then pull together the two traditions into critical feminist theory. As Manning and I (2015) argue,“the combining of feminist approaches…with critical approaches… leads to fruitful theorizing for interpersonal communication studies” (p. 134). Critical feminist theory shares the three themes outlined by Rakow and Wackwitz (2004), representation, difference, and voice, while also focusing on power. Communication for CFT is the medium in which patriarchy (and other oppressive forces) is both reaffirmed and resisted and the channel through which these forces shape and constrain individuals’ experiences. Though CFT scholars explore a multitude of areas, we focus on four current trends, before turning to methodological innovations. Next, in evaluating CFT, insight, provocativeness, ethics, and commitment to social change are examined. Finally, if CFT work is going to reach its full potential, changes need to be made in the ways that we identify and expand this theory. Moving forward, I argue for four directions for CFT theory and scholars.